John of Sebastopol

John Greaves

...About contributions of Glen during the ARPA net developments and his lasting impressions on those people he touched. Yes. My stories with Glen and Susie go back to the North Hall computer center where Mike McCammon spent their late nights and I was the computer operator for the center's IBM 1620 computer, which, as I recall, was the main computer, not counting the big thing that Glen and Mike worked on (the RW-400 with its drum memory....).

But anyway there are many stories from that time I would enjoy sharing with a glass of Sonoma county's heavy red with the other greybeards.

But for sure Glen's impression on me was very rich and long lasting. The existence of the company I helped to found, Motion Analysis Corporation, would not be were it not for Glen and those days. While I was not involved in the development of the ARPA net stuff, my path led me to the softer biology department where the Bugwatcher came to be. My freedom to pursue this path was Glen's soft talking the ARPA guys ( I suspect ) and led to the EPA contract to develop Model 2 and Motion Analysis followed.

Other questions about who went where: Gordon Buck, the wiry lanky assistant to Glen who drove an old Porsche convertible, I think. And the night he drove on 101 through Malibu to see a galloping horse through the windshield which soon wound up in his passenger's seat and let go a load. Gordon and his poncho on the water skiing trips was a sight not to forget. Seen Gordon?...

There are many recollections from RW-400 days to water ski trips, North Hall and Engineering, gas balloons with oxygen & acetylene, red laser dots on the sidewalk in foggy Isla Vista. And more, but that's for another time I guess.

I met Glen when I was working at the North Hall computer center as the operator for the IBM 1620 campus computer. Glen and Mike McCammon running between the refrigerator sized boxes (RW-400) flipping octal numbers into banks of switches, pushing big square green buttons and red buttons. Night time stuff. Late and I was the night operator feeding the card boxes into the card reader and dealing with bent and otherwise pre- or post-mutilated ones. The new Engineering building was already built and mostly empty, but a big improvement in our status from the art building, where Gary Nelson and I ventured from Orange Coast College to find higher education. According to Glen, it was at my suggestion that he talk to the people in Engineering about moving there since the math department was a bit stuffy and theoretical for Glen's hands-on work. Numerical analysis and on-line computing, the guy with the big smile and warm heart from Kansas who was the smartest person I had ever met.

Glen asked if I wanted to be a grad student, which sounded a whole lot better than soldiering in Vietnam which was the only other option for able young men at that time. Glen got the third floor and the ARPA research grant and some workers and students. People connecting computers together, on-line terminals being designed with special keyboards, speech research with tanks of Donald Duck helium and my project which I dubbed the Bugwatcher. Which was real-time video processing hardware and software which I learned a lot about. I lived in Santa Barbara for 10 years and am still with the lady I married at the courthouse, Melanie. And the people and the projects were amazing.

With the conclusion of the time for finishing came my only agreement with Richard Nixon which was that 26+ males were not suitable for drafting into the US Army. I think I was Glen's first PhD student graduating in 1971. I stayed in SB for another year and taught some fun courses at UCSB. Melanie and I decided it was time for a new adventure and off to rural southern Massachusetts along the Cape Cod-Newport coastline with a house overlooking the lovely Westport River and a canoe and Hobie Cat on the marsh waiting for the right tide or wind. Another 10 years went by. I helped to bring about a program in computer engineering at SMU (Southeastern Massachusetts University now called Univ. Mass. at Dartmouth, I think). And research and consulting with EPA in lovely Narragansett, RI, took me over the Newport Bridge many times.

But it always reminded me of the Golden Gate. So, I got tired of the cold wet spring and summer and (most of) fall and winter. I wanted to smell the dust of a California country lane and get warm in the summer. So I quit the University (with tenure and 1 year to full prof), we sold the waterfront house and moved to Sonoma county at the end of 1979. It would have been nice to have had a job to go to, but that did not seem possible. Jobs were possible in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale and San Jose, but not Santa Rosa or Sebastopol.

I peddled my software skills and got a bite at Digital Telephone Systems in Novato, where I was software engineer then advanced development engineer then manager of the Advanced Development Engineering department, which was about 6 of the brainy screwball engineers who had to figure out the next product or the company would go broke. This we did with some success and the title looked good on the venture capital business plan. So Motion Analysis Corporation was formed in Santa Rosa with technology from one of Glen's projects in encouraging the Bugwatcher. I still don't know how he explained this project to Larry Roberts or the other ARPA guys, but he did and somehow it all happened. And I stay on the board of directors.

Starting a little company has a lot of ups and downs and we have survived many of these. I am the chief technologist, not wanting to be the president who deals with bankers and lawyers and runs sales and marketing. We have slowly grown to about 30 people; our latest market is with the computer animation companies. Wavefront of Santa Barbara has been helpful in getting into some key accounts. I remember our sailing trip, the big one for me, from Santa Barbara to Hawaii on Larry Green's schooner, the "Gallant." Barels and I had the 12 to 4 AM watch together, which is the toughest and coldest. Sustained by hot chocolate and hot air, we thought about starting companies that one day might work together. I think Glen's influence was there somewhat too in the starting of other companies, because he gave the people the "can do" attitude which undoubtedly influenced Larry Green as board member to Wavefront too. All interconnected somehow.

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